Land Acknowledgement

We welcome everyone to Waawiyatanong with the understanding that the welcoming is not ours to do, as we are guests and continued colonizers on this land. We acknowledge that the land was stolen from Indigenous Americans, and that white people forcibly brought Black and Brown people here to continue their violent colonization.

It is important that we as an Association honor our values of equity and intentional inclusion by incorporating land and labor acknowledgements as part of our events, meetings, and conversations, as well as including these acknowledgements through our actions. 

Land and labor acknowledgements should seek not to further traumatize people of color while emphasizing for white individuals the continued pain caused by genocide, slavery, colonization, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, and bias. We hope to spur action rather than guilt, indifference, or debate.

 

Labor Acknowledgement

A labor acknowledgement is, to be clear with our words, an acknowledgement of the history of genocidal chattel slavery in this country. The impact of forced physical, emotional, economic, and sexual labor continues to this day.

We need to also acknowledge that unfair labor practices, including but not limited to, unfair wage gaps, minimum wage that does not meet costs of living, harassment and bias in hiring practices, and more, continue to exist. There is also still a stigma to labor labeled as “unskilled” when we know that no labor is unskilled labor. We encourage you, as we will do, to recognize and appreciate it is  often hidden labor that allows us to engage successfully in our own labor together.